A Father's Trauma | A Daughter's Craft

Grace Talusan reflects on her father's reaction to her essay "The Nightmares He Carried" and about how writing can stop the cycle of trauma and violence.

Grace Talusan and her father in a boat

In Consequence Forum Issue 16.2, I published an essay, “The Nightmares He Carried,” about a recent evening when I heard my father shouting in his sleep and I decided to wake him. My mother has complained throughout their marriage about my father’s nightmares—sometimes he kicks and punches in the middle of the night while she sleeps next to him.

I ask my father, who is as much of a reader of literary essays as he is a conversationalist about art and meaning-making (which is not much at all), to read the essay. “I want to interview you about it,” I say. “Are you up for that?”

Some time later, my father reports that he read the entire essay all the way to the end. I was incredulous and put on my most professorial voice, “And what is your response to the text?” A defensive move on my part, a way to prepare myself for his complaints and challenges: How dare I write about him? Who do I think I am writing about the family’s trauma?

“You made a mistake in your writing,” he says. “This is a very important correction.” So important that he repeats the fact a few times throughout our brief interview. I hold my breath and prepare myself for whatever it is he’s about to say. “My boat was sixteen and a half feet long, not twenty. I don’t think they make a twenty-foot Bayliner and someone might pick up on that.” He wants me to know this small fact because if I include an error in my writing, it could put my credibility into question.

I thank him for the clarification. I’m all for accuracy, but out of everything I write about in the essay—his nightmares, the ways that he silently suffers—this is what stands out?

“So, you read the essay about you?” I ask again.

“Yes,” he answers. “What is the dream that I was having that you wrote about?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” I answer. “You tell me. Do you remember anything about your nightmares?”

“I was probably getting robbed by bad people,” he says.

I want to stop the interview to explain to him that I don’t believe in “bad people,” but I restrain myself…

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